Black Halo

*

‘You’ve … come back.’ She had gasped not so many years ago, astonished to find him standing on her balcony, clad in his coat and hat. ‘You said it was a special case.’

‘It was. I came back, anyway.’ He smiled, shrugged off his coat. ‘I’ve already paid.’

‘Paid? Why?’ She pulled away from him, tears brimming in her eyes. ‘I thought … you were going to take me away when you came back. You said …’

‘I know … I know.’ The pain on his face had been visible then, not hidden behind years of wrinkles. ‘But … the case got me noticed. I’m being made …’ He had sighed, rubbed his eyes, shook his head. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry. I won’t lie again.’

‘But … you … you said …’

‘And I never will again. It was stupid of me to say it in the first place.’

‘It wasn’t! You were going to-’

‘It was. I can’t. I’m a Librarian. I have duties.’

‘But why?’ she asked then. ‘Why do you have to be a Librarian? ’

‘Why?’ she asked now, shaking her head. ‘Why do you have to be the one to avenge her?’ She held up a hand. ‘Don’t say duty … don’t you dare say it.’

‘Because I have a gift,’ he said without hesitation. ‘And so rarely do I get the chance for that gift to be used in a way that I consider more worthwhile than duty.’

‘Will I see you again?’

He paused as he opened his coat and held open his pocket.

‘Maybe,’ he answered.

His next word was something she couldn’t understand, something no one else but a wizard could understand. She certainly understood what it was, however, for no sooner did he speak it than the sound of paper rustling filled the room.

Silent save for the rattle of their wings, the cranes came to life. Their eyes glowed in a thousand little pinpricks of ruby; their wings shuddered in a thousand little whispers. They fell from bookshelf and basin, rose from tile and chair, hung a moment in the air.

Then flew.

She shrieked, shielding herself from the thousand paper wings as the room was filled with bone-white cranes and the sound of tiny wings flapping. In a great torrent, they flew into Bralston’s coat pocket, folding themselves neatly therein.

She kept her eyes closed, opening them only when she heard the larger wings flapping. Opening her eyes and seeing nothing standing at her balcony, she rushed to the edge and watched him sail over the rooftops of Cier’Djaal on the leather wings his coat had once been. And with each breath, he shrank until he wasn’t even bigger than her thumb.

And then, Bralston was gone.

Four

THE PRISTINE MADNESS

‘Pretty,’ he whispered.

‘Hmm?’ the voice replied.

‘I was simply noting the beauty of it all,’ Lenk replied as he stared out over the vast, dreaming blue around him.

The ocean stretched out, engulfing him in a gaping, azure yawn. A yawn seemed fitting, Lenk decided, for the sheer uncaring nature of it all. It did not move, did not ripple, did not change as the sky did. There wasn’t a cloud to mar his perfect view of the sprawling underwater world.

The sky had betrayed him too many times. It had hidden his sun behind clouds and sullied his earth with rain. The sky was a spiteful, wicked thing of thunder and wind. The ocean didn’t care.

‘The ocean … it loves me,’ he whispered. His face contorted suddenly and his eyes went wide, not feeling the salt that should be stinging them. ‘What did I just say?’

‘I wasn’t listening,’ the voice said.

‘No, I said the “ocean loves me.” What a deranged thing to say. I said the sky was spiteful, it betrayed me.’

‘You only thought that.’

‘I thought you weren’t listening.’

‘Not to your voice, no.’

‘Then …’ He clutched his head, not feeling his fingers on his skin. ‘It’s finally happened. I’ve gone insane.’

‘You didn’t stop to think that when you realised you weren’t breathing?’

Lenk’s hands went to his throat. The panic that surged through him left his heartbeat oddly slow and his pulse standing still. He knew he should be terrified, should be thrashing and watching his screams drift to the surface in soundless bubbles. But, for all that he knew he should, drowning simply didn’t bother him.

But it should, he told himself. I should be afraid. But I’m not … I feel …

‘Peaceful.’

The voice, or rather voices, that finished his thoughts were not his own, but they were familiar to his ears. Far more familiar, he knew, than he would have ever liked. He recognised them, remembered them from his dreams and heard them every time his leg ached.

It would have seemed redundant to call the Deepshriek by name, even as it drifted out of the endless blue and into his vision. Three pairs of eyes stared at him. The pair of soulless black eyes affixed to the massive shark that served as the abomination’s body was simply unnerving. He didn’t truly begin to worry until he looked into the glimmering golden stares of the two feminine faces with hair of red and black, swaying upon delicate, grey stalks from the beast’s grey back.

‘It could always be this way, you know,’ the one with the copper hair said. ‘Drifting. Endless. Peace. Lay down your sword.’

‘I can’t,’ he replied.

‘Why do you want to kill us?’ the black-haired one asked, her lips a pout. ‘We merely wish to deliver the peace you feel now to all who have been lied to by the sky.’

‘It deceives,’ the red one hissed. ‘Tricks. You are told to pray to it, to give your troubles to the sky.’

‘It gives warmth,’ Lenk noticed, seeing the beams of sun that even now sought to reach him below. It was warm down here, far too warm for the ocean he had come to know these past weeks.

‘Fleeting. When you need it most, where is the light? What does the sky offer then?’ the black one sighed. ‘Rain, thunder, sorrows. How can you trust something that is so fickle? So changing?’

‘It lied to you,’ the red one growled.

‘It sent you down here,’ the black one snarled.

‘But we embrace you,’ they both replied in discordant harmony. ‘We give you peace. We give you …’

‘Endless blue,’ Lenk finished for them. He narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ve heard that before.’

‘Have you?’

‘From every one of your demon servants, yes.’

‘Demons?’

‘What else would you call them?’

‘Interesting question,’ the black one muttered.